She is to me, the most classy food stall owner I have ever known, and also the one I turn to for the ultimate Ipoh comfort food- fishball noodles. Always in a fitting samfu with butterfly buttons across her neck, my mother and I believe strongly that her inadvertent beauty regime is the many years of standing in front of the stove and letting the goodness of the steaming soup passing through her face, and thereby locking her beauty. (Pasir Pinji, Ipoh, May 2012)
My eyes sometimes gravitate to the ordinary as though as an invisible pair of googles transfix itself upon them. A change of light, a twist of mood, and after some dish-washing, a picture quietly appears. (Selangor, May, 2012)
What does it feel like to finally accept yourself as you are? To stand in front of a full length mirror and love that sagging skin, that lump of fat on your belly and to be able to have two scoops of ice cream for dessert without sucking in your stomach thereafter? It is like being a pendulum, swaying from one end to the other; in perfect rhythm, not missing a beat. It is like finally catching on the dance steps that our dance partner and instructor- God- has taught us for so long. And we are laughing, rejoicing, having fun, filled with gratitude of the life’s ups and downs that we are survivors of. And we are jiggy-ing, giggling while fumbling with our steps in front of that mirror; giddy with happiness in the presence of our Maker.
Acceptance
Suicide chicken (Off Siem Reap, March 2012)
"The goal of editing a set of photos is to arrange them in a way where there is Visual Emotional Coherence"
- Alex Webb
I would like to learn, or remember, how to live. The weasel lives in necessity and we live in choice, hating necessity and dying at the last ignobly in its talons. I would like to live as I should, as the weasel lives as he should. We could, you know. We can live any way we want. People take vows of poverty, chastity and obedience- even of silence- by choice. The thing is to stalk your calling in a certain skilled and supple way, to locate the most tender and live spot and plug into that pulse. This is yielding, not fighting. A weasel doesn’t “attack” anything; a weasel lives as he’s meant to, yielding at every moment to the perfect freedom of single necessity. I think it would be well, and proper, and obedient, and pure, to grasp your one necessity and not let it go, to dangle from it limp wherever it takes you. Then even death, where you’re going no matter how you live, cannot you part. Seize it and let it seize you up aloft even, till your eyes burn out ant drop; let your musky flesh fall off in shreds, and let your every bones unhinge and scatter, loosened over fields, over fields and woods, lightly, thoughtless, from any height at all, from as high as eagles. - excerpts from Living Like Weasels, Annie Dillard
When I photographed, especially farming and rural communities, I realized that I had become a part of the people that I photographed. We became poor in material together, we hardly change our clothes, we baked our backs under the sun and we take no breaks for the ongoing moment. The only thing that binds us is our spirits in trying to understand each other. That itself, is richness.
Naree is eleven years old. Every day, she cooks, makes palm sugar, takes care of her family’s cows, with little time for break in between. (Dan Run Commune, Cambodia, March 2012)
Keep walking, though there’s no place to get to. Don’t try to see through the distances. That’s not for human beings. Move within, but don’t move the way fear makes you move. Today, like every other day, we wake up empty & frightened. Don’t open the door to the study and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument. Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground. Rumi
Keep Walking
Girl in a village crowd (Cambodia, March 2012)
